WPCNR LAW JOURNAL. News & Comment By John F. Bailey. April 28, 2024:
In the 6th and 5th Century B.C in ancient Greece where intellectual thought and philosophy began there was a movement that rose among intellectuals , now what we’d call a fad that challenged the standards of education and moral codes and behaviors of the philosophers of the time. It was a group of new teachers of youth and adult leadership that challenged standards of the time.
They were known as “The Sophists”.
Wikipedia describes them from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defining and describing who and what they were as chronicled by Plato in the Plato dialogues and the Sophists’ roles in government :
“The major sophists were considerable celebrities, and were active in public affairs.
The Protagoras (dialogue) captures the excitement which they engendered on arriving in a city, the cosmopolitan clientele who accompanied them and their associations with the rich and powerful.
Some made a great deal of money; Hippias boasts (Greater Hippias 282e) of making, in a single visit to Sicily, more than a hundred and fifty minas, i.e., fifteen thousand drachmas, something in the region of thirty years’ wages for a skilled craftsman, and Socrates says (Meno 91d) that Protagoras earned more than ten sculptors, including the celebrated Phidias.
Protagoras drew up the law-code for the foundation of the Athenian colony of Thurii in 444/3 (Diogenes Laertius IX.50), and Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus and possibly also Thrasymachus acted as diplomatic representatives of their respective cities.
But their wealth and celebrity status has to be set against the negative reaction they aroused in those of conservative views, e.g. Anytus in Meno 89e–94e, who saw them (to a considerable extent unfairly, as we have seen) as subversive of morality and religion and a bad influence on the young.
According to Plato in the Apology, it was that climate of opinion, most strikingly expressed in Aristophanes’ Clouds, which had led eventually to the condemnation of Socrates on grounds of irreligion and the corruption of the young.
Consequently, his rehabilitation of Socrates leads him to contrast the genuine philosopher with the sophists, whom he depicts predominantly as charlatans.
That hostile portrait was the historical foundation of the conception of the sophist as a dishonest argumentative trickster, a conception which remains the primary sense of the word in modern usage, but which considerably distorts what can be recovered of the historical reality.”
I was struck by the similarity of the philosophy judges of today appointed to courts recommended by think tanks who have held the politicians attention and advised them over the last 25 years and more specifically during the Trump administration.
Those conservative judges in Federal Courts and state courts, and of course the Supreme Court now are creating their own philosophy of law based on the original constitution, heavily influenced by who appoints them, who is on trial, and “what if” defenses creatively invented by legal counsel of conservative philosophy convincing judges, (not all) to make decisions on up through the structure of the courts that turn “wrongs” into “rights,” “fraud” into “business practices,” “legal procedures” into “violations of rights,” offering differences of interpretation into “violation of rights.”
The Supreme Court pre-decision thoughts, after arguments this week (not yet a written decision on this matter), on former President Trump’s immunity from prosecution, are chilling.
If a President is totally immune for prosecution while he or she is President, then he or she can order people to be murdered while President who might be enemies, journalists, editors, members of congress, or prosecuted, or remove Supreme Court justices.
If a president is immune from being prosecuted for anything done while he or she is out of office, then he or she can not be prosecuted for any crimes or misdemeanors. It could be quite convenient for an ex-President to kill his wife rather then give her a divorce because he did not want to give her a settlement, like Henry the 8th did while he was King of England.
This will be a very interesting decision when it is finally released. Will they set conditions when the President is not immune, like a murder, for example?
When the President is out of office on his own time, receiving Presidential pension and health care from the government, will they still be subject to prosecution for fraud, insurrection? (But of course, storming a building is not insurrection, far from it, of course.)
However a great expansion of the impact of whatever decision guidelines on Presidential immunity the Supreme court creates, opens new legal avenues for defense lawyers of the rich, the poor, the minorities, alike. This will happen under the “all men are created equal” words in the constitution. If the President is now above the law by the as yet not unveiled decision pre-release, is this not a violation and applies to all men?
Women.
Liisten. if the President is immune from prosecution, does this mean only men have equal rights under the law and women cannot sue for sexual misconduct, the right for abortion permission, rape, etc. This will be the longest decision by a Supreme Court in history. They have to say “men and women are equal under the law.”
The court decisions so far have been historically impacting. The decision that corporations are people and can create Political Action Committees. The elimination of class action suits. The abortion decision ignoring existing law, inflicting personal beliefs on “the pursuit of happiness.’
Why do I think the Supreme Court is “The Sophist” Court?”
They were appointed for their beliefs and decisions they made in the past to pursue a policy not their beliefs in right and wrong, which they failed to declare.
They were were unduly influenced by their personal beliefs. I remember Judge Francis Nicolai in White Plains Supreme Court in the Hockley-Delgado election case, pointing to the black sleeve of his robe and saying, “I wear these robes to right wrongs.” The judges on the court may believe they are right wrongs, when in reality they are encouraging new laws to prosecute women who try to travel and medicate to have abortions, creating greater wrongs against women.
They do not have good reasoning powers. They like the Sophists base it on their personal beliefs not what the effects their beliefs have on people affected by their decision. They do not have wisdom.
They have abandoned their loyalty to the people of this nation, to reward the powers that appointed them, especially in delaying the trial of the former President until after the election. This is self-serving to their own interests. A judge should be indifferent to self-interest. A favorable ruling on Presidential immunity, I might add means nothing a President does is wrong. He could remove the Liberal Justices by Executive Order for example.
Sophists think, as Plato and Socrates pointed out are not Guardians of the People, they believe in their philosophies first and foremost and that they are right always.
